Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Wednesday and our 3 hour boat tour

When I did my research about Dauphin Island, I found a nice thing to do that all of the family could do. It was a 3 hour tour of the gulf and the surrounding area on a boat ride.
Before going on the boat ride, we decided to hit the public beach. As we were walking to the beach, Eric tripped over this huge rock. I don't know how he didn't see it was beyond me. All I heard was "oof" and there he is face down in the sand. This beautiful girl in a 2 piece walked by him and as sweet as could be asked him if he was ok. He never got embarrassed, never turned red, never even looked at the girl either!
The water was so calm that afternoon, it was perfect. Too bad we had other plans. And as I look back now, that was the only day that the water was that calm. It was great. I would have loved to have sat on the beach all day that day and enjoy the time out there.


We decided to take this ride on a boat called The Duke. It was a very interesting tour. At first we toured close to the island and spotted a sailboat that didn't quite make it back to shore. Apparently the owner didn't know how to read the charts, and for 2 weeks it has been mostly under water.
We were heading to the Sand Island Lighthouse, but we hit some really rough weather, so he decided that it would not be a smart idea to go over there. So, I missed out on this trip with the lighthouse. It is okay, we still got to see the Exxon Mobil oil rig, and we watched the people on the rig taking pics of us as we were taking pics of them.




He took us all through the Mississippi Sound showing us around the island. We went under the bridge that connects the island to the mainland. The boys were really impressed that we went under there to get to the west side of the island.

At one point the captain threw the nets over and he dragged them for about 30 minutes. He pulled up the nets and there were all kinds of fish and sea creatures in the nets. He had to pull out the "pinchy" stuff before we got to pet or pick up anything. There was a ribbon eel in the net, and if he left that thing in there it would have eaten the other fish and bitten us in the process. He removed 2 catfish, the barbs from the stingrays, and removed the larger crabs. We he got done, we got to see all that was in the touch tank.






The boys enjoyed picking up the fish, touching the stingrays, watching the puff fish puff, picking up the squid, and collecting the sand dollars. After a while, the fish started dying off, so they had to be thrown back for a meal for the other fish. There was a woman there collecting the dead fish. She was gonna freeze them for the family. Why? I don't know. It was kinda weird to me, but she was a know it all, and she knew what she was doing.

That was enough for us for the day.

We came back and attempted to start that cheap grill again! With the wind blowing and the humidity in the air. I do believe that was the chore of the week with that thing!
Stay tuned, I am almost done!

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